Abstract

Collection of airborne sensor data, also known as aerial survey, is one of the best methods of examining a wide territory. This technique can be used for a countless number of applications: environment, mapping, agriculture or security are only some examples of the possible fields where aerial survey can be a valuable tool. Grup Air-Med S.A. is an aviation company that develops part of its business in this field with the aid of its fleet of manned aircrafts. Executing aerial surveys missions often leads to flight complex trajectories, e.g., when performing a scanning pattern over a region of interest. Concepts such as synthetic vision1 and tunnel-in-the sky2 can be key technologies to assist the pilots in this kind of missions. With the aim of train the pilots on flying this specific flight plans, the ICARUS research group has developed a training application. The ICARUS Training/Tracking App works in combination with certified flight simulation software. It displays a 2D graphical representation of the terrain and the mission flight plan. Additional aids such as the Pictometric System and Course Deviation Indicator are also emulated. The system has been conceived as a service following the distributed computing paradigm, thus, it can be integrated in very different system architectures. Therefore, the software can be used not only in simulation environments, but also in real airborne systems. Current implementation has basic error monitoring and reporting capabilities. This Master Thesis is focused on the enhancement of the application visual aids and error monitoring capabilities. The objectives are: · Define and implement comprehensive error tracking algorithms in order to improve correction suggestions to the pilot. · Improve the graphical representation of the mission flight plan with the addition of the maximum allowed deviations. · Assess the integration of 3D synthetic vision techniques. · Define error reporting methods in order to evaluate the pilots' performance. · Integration of the Keyhole Markup Language (KML) standard for georeferenced information visualization. · Evaluate the compliance with current aeronautical standards for Cockpit Display Systems (CDS). · Incorporation to airborne systems (to be confirmed). Integration of navigation performance representation techniques.